


All This

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Season 11, Seizure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22935901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Can you write more context around Scully’s seizure? I’ve pictured her cooking something at their house on a normal Saturday evening when it happens. How does it start? What happens after she wakes and he’s telling her stories? Follow up to Same Old.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	All This

The tomato sauce is thickening and the smell of garlic bread cooking is filling the kitchen. Rain beats against the window in a steady rhythm. It’s a good day to be inside, she thinks, sipping a little of the sauce from a spoon. It’s hot and she savours its richness on her tongue. In another life, (blame Mulder’s insistent belief in reincarnation), she would have built a home with a family, cooking and creating and nurturing. In this life, it’s just the two of them and the hope that their son is out there building a life of his own choosing.

Her hand trembles when she replaces the spoon in the pot. She lifts it, watches the tremor. Her doctor’s brain supplies her with numerous reasons for such symptoms from the simple and likely (dehydration) to the unlikely and cruelly complex (tumour). Turning towards the round table in the kitchen, she rubs at her neck as she pulls out a chair. Mulder is in the shower, the song of plumbing reverberates through her. Her vision fades in and out briefly. It’s puzzling, she thinks, but she’s been on her feet all day, tidying the laundry cupboard and sorting through old files in the office.

“These are a marker of our history together,” Mulder had whined when she tapped her index finger on the ‘to shred’ pile.

“These,” she had countered, “are a marker of an out of date filing system. Scan them or shred them.”

He’d pouted at her order and she’d laughed, kneeling down to pull out the bottom drawer.

Now, as she presses her palm against her chest, forming a V under her hyoid bones, she can’t even think if she ate lunch. She’s probably drunk too much coffee. Her little finger sits over her heart. It’s working harder under her touch, beating like the rain. She should know better.

Closing her eyes, she focuses on her breathing. In and out. In and out. An ache tugs at her hairline. The tightness in her neck increases, her ears ring and her fingers go numb. Then her toes. If she stands, she knows she will pass out. She twists her ankles one by one, then threads each finger with the finger and thumb of the opposite hand. Her heart speeds up and her peripheral vision fades.

The memory of waking up in the hospital with Mulder leaning over her, telling her she’d had a seizure and her brain was on fire, is vague, though the visions had been strikingly vivid. What she’d seen was apocalyptic. It was enough to set anybody’s brain on fire. Someone had tried to kill her. But the thing that she sees as clear as day, even now as she recuperates, is William.

The pipes clunk as Mulder finishes his shower, she looks over her shoulder at the pot, sauce bubbling out and splattering the tile splashback. The spaghetti is standing in a glass jar. She should put the water on to boil.

She is struck by a sudden flash of their son’s face. His eyes, like Mulder’s, his chin set to stubborn, his hair wild. She stands halfway up, lurches forward, tries to call for Mulder but crashes to the floor with William’s name on her tongue.

There are bursts of clarity: Mulder’s watch, the cobweb wrapped around the ceiling fan, the acidic smell of tomato, the cold hardness of the tiled floor, a siren wailing. William is with her, shows her such strange things, snow globes and monsters and windmills. She opens her eyes when Mulder strokes her hair from her face. His fingers grip her hand and she slides her thumb up his wrist, comforted to feel his pulse in the soft space there.

“Stay still, Scully. You have to keep still.” She tries to sit up but he pushes her down, so gentle, even in his rising panic. She sees the tendons in his neck stretch and hears the clipped note in his voice.

Her tongue feels swollen in her throat and she can’t do anything but open and close her mouth like a fish. Mulder interprets her breathy moans as speech and he begins to tell her stories. She listens, letting familiar mutant and place names warm her frozen mind. These are the tales from the files that should be shredded. He’s talking about kissing the Jersey Devil and there’s such a look of nostalgic tenderness in his eyes that she wants to tell him to keep them but she can’t get the words out.

He bends closer to her face, presses his fingers to her mouth and says, “Shhh, honey, I didn’t do it, because she wasn’t you.”

A tear slips from her eye and he kisses it away. Frustration at her inability to move burns in her skull and she feels her grasp on consciousness slipping away.

When she wakes again, she’s in the emergency room and Mulder is answering the doctor’s questions with characteristic impatience. After some time, the curtain is yanked back and the doctor leaves. Hooked up to monitors, she can’t move much, but she turns her face to him and brushes his forearm with her index finger.

He smiles, relief in his tired eyes as he stands up. “All this because I wouldn’t do the filing?”

She smiles back and croaks out a painful laugh as he lays his head over her chest.


End file.
